First Grade News

Hello Families,

We have been continuing our reading adventures in storybooks! 1st graders have practiced revisiting (rereading) their books to notice more and understand the story better. We also reread and found pages that connect to the main trouble (problem) of the story.  We are noticing that there are many clues and little problems that lead up to the main problem in fiction. At home, please continue to practice retelling after reading and building your child’s reading stamina.  We are able to read for over 15 minutes as a whole class!

First graders have been working hard to prepare for their publishing party next week! They looked at other nonfiction books to see if there are any other features they want to add to their books to teach their readers.  Students added maps, diagrams, graphs, comparison charts, jokes, and fun facts! They have revised their books with their partners to make sure their work makes sense and that there is enough detail. Then they edited with their partners to check for punctuation, spelling, and spacing. We are now fancying up our book by coloring and creating covers!

In Math, students are practicing how to tell time on both digital and analog clocks! Students learned about the parts of analog clocks, and how read them. Although in first grade our goal is to learn time to the hour and half hour, our students are so enthusiastic about time that we are also learning about quarter hours! We played a game called I have/Who has where students matched analog and digital times. Students also learned about am/pm, and practiced writing about what happens at different times of day. Ask your child to tell time at home!

In the Hebrew classroom this week, we started traveling through the state of Israel! We started in the north in the port city of Haifa, made our way to the Kineret and through the busy streets of Tel Aviv. Students wrote sentences in Hebrew of what we can find in each place and drew pictures of each city inspired by images they saw in photographs, videos, and books. We look forward to continuing our traveling to new places in Israel next week. We learned about the omer, the time between Passover to the next holiday, Shavuot.  Every day at the end of tefilah we count how many days we are into the omer. When we reach the forty-ninth day of the omer, we will be ready to celebrate Shavuot! We also talked about Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israel’s Independence Day which we will celebrate together next week. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Liz, Talia, and Ilana